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On September 30 2009 04:50 Code wrote: It would certainly suck to sentenced to life in jail...
and could you imagine the statutory rape crimes??? If the technology were possible and did exist, it would be beyond all but the richest people's price tags, and certainly not available to prisoners.
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On September 30 2009 03:16 L wrote: He is, sadly, completely wrong.
We might complete a workable method of gene therapy in 20 years and boost levels of a number of anti-aging compounds, but without body-wide genetic replenishment and epi-genetic 'reformating' of a certain type, we can't really wind the clock back. Additionally, there's the issue of immunological complications coming along with any genetic therapy, which add a rather obtuse obstacle for us.
Generally speaking, the more pro-'immortality' genetics we insert into a cell, the more likely it is that it will develop into cancer, which kills. When we've removed 'aging' genes in mice, they died very early with multiple, massive tumors dotting all of their organs.
So what's the magic bullet here? We can barely develop effective defenses against pandemic level viruses, yet he believes we can conquer varied, time dependant genetics which we have near zero epigenetic information on?
LOL TO YOU, MY GOOD SIR.
QFT.
This is a very scientific perspective, and one that everyone should read. The major point is, if we can't even cure MUCH simpler problems, how could you possibly expect to solve such a complex and unknown system?
This "scientist" sounds like the kind of guy who'll say anything to get his name in the paper.
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Question of philosophy, not scientific.
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What does this all spell out for our future? According to Kurzweil's theory the Law of Accelerating Returns: "So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs."
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On September 29 2009 18:42 noddyz wrote:This. Guy who doesn't know what his talking about talks about stuff he doesn't know about. Immortality seems possible and within the realms of human possibility, but his timeframes off. Medicine progress has been slowing down for years, pharma is mainly rehashing the same compounds now, so its going to take a major leap just to lay the foundations that slowing ageing can be built upon. Saying that i don't really know what im talking about either.
Since when is somebody who has eleven Honorary Doctorates in Science not a scientist?
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Most of you people are rather ignorant, he is overly optimistic about overcoming problems, but you can't compare one technology to the other. That is like compering progress of telephones to predict that you will never be able to send video over the internet.
What you will do fax 30 pages per minute? Internet video stream will never work.
Also on what basis you decide what problem is harder to solve then the other? How changes in one part of DNA influence rest of it is very complex problem, and it don't look like we are anywhere near to solve it, there is to much details to check, nanobots are much simpler considering how much we need to know for them to work.
"Generally speaking, the more pro-'immortality' genetics we insert into a cell, the more likely it is that it will develop into cancer, which kills. When we've removed 'aging' genes in mice, they died very early with multiple, massive tumors dotting all of their organs."
Nice simplification, cancer is overgrown of cell how that problem translate to nanobot technology? Completely irrelevant to what he was talking about.
Look what I had done I had called those things pro-immortality so nanobots can't work becouse they are also pro-immortality - very scientific.
"So what's the magic bullet here? We can barely develop effective defenses against pandemic level viruses, yet he believes we can conquer varied, time dependant genetics which we have near zero epigenetic information on?"
No it is about repairing the cells of your body. DNA can cause cancer or any other disease but that could be fixed by nanobots. We need to know what body does not where it is in DNA for this technology to work, much easier, and realistically viable. It will probably still not be immorality but rather long lengthening of being young.
Easiest way to archive "immortality" (in the sense of keeping yourself with good physical condition) will probably be connected with ditching biological bodies completely.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
There is 1000 and 1 reason to humans dying, and over the development of medicine some fade while others become apparent. There's a limit on the amount of divisions a cell can make (each division cuts off a piece of the DNA in a normal cell during DNA replication) that is a natural death sentence for all highly developed organisms and that, true, can be overcome (in fact, cancer cells don't have such limits and are, in a sense, immortal). However, another death cause is mutation. Every time we catch a virus, every time a cell divides in our body there's a chance of slight change in DNA. Such slight changes and errors accumulate over the years, leading to major disfunctions in elder ages. That kind of process is highly stochastic, reversing it looks much like going against the second law of thermodynamics because in it's essence it's very akin to dissipation. Going against that would be a problem.
Oh and the model where the whole lot of our organs (excluding genitals) is just a supplementation for our brain is not really a modern view on things. It might satiate the church or people who seriously believe in crap like "human is the king of species bla bla bla".
In reality the whole lot of our organs including our brain is a supplementary system for our genitals.
The reason why our body starts breaking after some age because at that point we have already reached the reproductive period and there's no real biological reason to go on. The genes inherited are those who let you survive until you are able to and then seduce a female and bounce them (your genes) down a generation. Genes that prolong life after the reproductive period are not a factor in natural selection and therefore have little chance to spread.
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immortality will lead to overpopulation.
and honestly i would not want to live to be say 200 years old; being like 90 years old is already physically challenging to some people.
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I don't know all that much about nanotechnology, but I am a junior working towards a Mechanical Engineering degree, and what little I've had to research into nanotechnology makes me wonder about the legitimacy of his arguments. Right now, the cutting-edge nanotechnology is very, very limited. It's just too unstable in most environments to be useful, especially in the complex environment of the human body. I researched a bit into carbon nanotubes last semester, one of the forefront materials in nanotechnology due to it's high tensile strength, and they are HIGHLY toxic to the human body.
I'm skeptical as to how the improvements in materials science over the next twenty years will solve problems like this.
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On September 30 2009 06:03 BluzMan wrote: Genes that prolong life after the reproductive period are not a factor in natural selection and therefore have little chance to spread.
If you are still able to reproduce when you are 90 years old your gene may have chance to spread  And if we live longer and longer ... oh wait ...
Anyway i think my main problem with immortality is that human brain is so imperfect that i would be sad to be like the "nameless one" from Planescape Torment. Losing your memories, changing your own personality over time is kinda scary.
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Nice simplification, cancer is overgrown of cell how that problem translate to nanobot technology? Completely irrelevant to what he was talking about. Its not a simplifcation. We've amplified levels of DMSO as well as levels of anti-apoptosis, anti-senescence proteins and the CELLS GET CANCER.
Or rather, the rate of cancer creating mutations which are sustained in the viable cell pool increases because signals which would have previously led to apoptosis and senescence are now drowned out.
I could give you 9000 words on different biochemical pathways and different proto-oncogenes and p53 and ras proteins and different mutation defects and their effects on developing malignant cancers, but its rather out of the scope of a post on a video-game site.
No it is about repairing the cells of your body. DNA can cause cancer or any other disease but that could be fixed by nanobots. See, this is the problem; Sure, in 60-100 years, it could, but we don't even know WHAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED. Even if we DID know, we'd need to develop a way that wouldn't kill you by sepsis. What's more, like i said, its not just DNA, its DNA modifications; modifications of more than simple copying errors in the DNA itself (which, by the way, we still don't know how to fix without causing cancer. we've tried. a lot). Its modification of the structure of the DNA itself, packing areas that need to be packed, unpacking areas that need to be copied and such. Moreover, there's an entire new set of nucleosome epigenetic coding that changes from person to person, sex to sex, time to time and organ to organ. So now only are you going to need to 'teach' nanobots how to repair proto-oncogenic mutations, but you're going to have to have them repair structural issues in order to have the proper expression patterns of these proper proteins. Lastly, these changes need to evade your immune response, which is difficult because new protein forms trigger an immune response.
So no, its not a 20 year project.
Genes that prolong life after the reproductive period are not a factor in natural selection and therefore have little chance to spread. Perfect example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington's_disease
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this is lies. and i hope no such thing ever happens -_-
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On September 30 2009 01:14 EsX_Raptor wrote: earth would be overpopulated easily.
I didn't read this shiz, but I'm assuming they are talking about downloading a human brain into a robot. The human body cannot live forever.
It wouldn't really matter if the earth was overpopulated if everyone was a robot.
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On September 30 2009 06:03 BluzMan wrote: Oh and the model where the whole lot of our organs (excluding genitals) is just a supplementation for our brain is not really a modern view on things. It might satiate the church or people who seriously believe in crap like "human is the king of species bla bla bla".
In reality the whole lot of our organs including our brain is a supplementary system for our genitals..
You are missing the point, from perspective of genes anty-conception is bad, but that don't mean that it is bad from your perspective. Reason on why something had develop =/= that thing, anty-conception among many other things proves that. I don't care on why I had evolutionary develop in one way or any other(beyond curiosity), just what that practically means for me my perspective as an agent. Evolutionary reasons influence me in multiple ways but they are not exactly my reasons to do something. Evolution can make me like/dislike various things but I do them because of that not becouse I care about what will happen to some of my DNA variation. Vast majority of things that I do don't help my genes in any way. I am well aware of that, and from my perspective I don't care about that.
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Why does everyone worry about "being old" you are going to be a cyborg bro...
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
On September 30 2009 06:35 Polis wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2009 06:03 BluzMan wrote: Oh and the model where the whole lot of our organs (excluding genitals) is just a supplementation for our brain is not really a modern view on things. It might satiate the church or people who seriously believe in crap like "human is the king of species bla bla bla".
In reality the whole lot of our organs including our brain is a supplementary system for our genitals.. You are missing the point, from perspective of genes anty-conception is bad, but that don't mean that it is bad from your perspective. Reason on why something had develop =/= that thing, anty-conception among many other things proves that. I don't care on why I had evolutionary develop in one way or any other(beyond curiosity), just what that practically means for me my perspective as an agent. Evolutionary reasons influence me in multiple ways but they are not exactly my reasons to do something. Evolution can make me like/dislike various things but I do them because of that not becouse I care about what will happen to some of my DNA variation. Vast majority of things that I do don't help my genes in any way. I am well aware of that, and from my perspective I don't care about that.
That's because you (as a conscience) are just a parasite on the body and brain thoroughly developed by your genome. From a evolutionary standpoint our bodies are just carriers for our genes and that cannot be denied. The opinion that brain is somehow superior to body is a deep misunderstanding of how and why it functions. While it's very romantic, it's far from truth. Our brain is just a tool that our genitals need to find food and fight off tigers with sticks and stones, and it's other functions like art and other forms of reflectivity are just a nice byproduct of it's immense computational capacity. We are a very fun species in a sense that we are the only in which the brain (namely, conscience) tries to take over the control from the genes and disrupt it's own function but seeing how genes are responsible for it's own creation it is natural to coin that kind of relationship as parasitism.
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On September 29 2009 17:25 VorcePA wrote:News ArticleShow nested quote +Thanks to science, our life expectancy has constantly been increasing. Now famed scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil thinks that we'll be immortal in just two decades.
According to the Telegraph, Kurzweil said that, at the rate of advancement in our understanding with science and technology, we could slow down or even reverse the aging process.
How will this be accomplished? Kurzweil thinks that it'll be nanotechnology. I think his timeframe is a bit too optimistic, but I wouldn't be surprised if our life expectancy jumped to 150 years in the next few decades. From there, the longer you live, the more technology advances, and the more technology advances, the longer you live past the 150 mark. Exciting times are upon us, if you exclude the economic situation, that is.
also of note is that when anyone does research, they need to spend the first 40 years of their life studying and getting phd and doing research grunt work.
that means that with the life limit at the 80 years that it is right now, each person only spends 50% of their time actively advancing science.
but when life expectancy increases, each year added is a full year added to the time a person can advance science. as a matter of fact, each year added is more valuable than previous years, because the older a person gets, the more they understand, and the better research they can do.
so in a way, there is a positive feedback loop that creates a sort of exponential growth.
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Probably will happen
but Not in 20 years
50 years at absolute minimum
200 years probably
if we go 500 years without a global disaster, almost certainly
Posters above are right, this is Way too complicated for a simple 20 year fix. (the ideas of transferring consciousness to another system or transferring the brain to an artificial body are similarly thick with complications)
Also the idea is not to continue living in a continuously aging body (that would be even harder than stopping aging)... it is to stop aging and all internal types of diseases (which means it would Definitely be a good thing for the individuals involved [except those life in prison sentences]).
Finally an Honorary Doctorate means Squat... Kermit the Frog has honorary doctorates.
For that matter even an earned PhD in science doesn't make you a scientist. That requires a particular manner of coming up with your ideas. He is certainly smart, but he is pushing his personal vision.
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On September 30 2009 06:49 BluzMan wrote: That's because you (as a conscience) are just a parasite on the body and brain thoroughly developed by your genome.
I don't care since genome has no feelings. I am parasite on my mug also, it don't even have free weekends, and no extra benefits from being used at night.
On September 30 2009 06:49 BluzMan wrote: From a evolutionary standpoint our bodies are just carriers for our genes and that cannot be denied.
So? Evolution just describe how physical forces made self replicating code "grow".
On September 30 2009 06:49 BluzMan wrote: The opinion that brain is somehow superior to body is a deep misunderstanding of how and why it functions.
No it is just not confusing irrelevant things. In what way it is supposed to be superior or inferior? That depends on perspective.
It is more important in the sense that it can feel, and care what it happening to it. I don't see a reason to protect anything that don't have such qualities.
On September 30 2009 06:49 BluzMan wrote:While it's very romantic, it's far from truth. Our brain is just a tool that our genitals need to find food and fight off tigers with sticks and stones, and it's other functions like art and other forms of reflectivity are just a nice byproduct of it's immense computational capacity.
So? How is that my concern?
On September 30 2009 06:49 BluzMan wrote:We are a very fun species in a sense that we are the only in which the brain (namely, conscience) tries to take over the control from the genes and disrupt it's own function but seeing how genes are responsible for it's own creation it is natural to coin that kind of relationship as parasitism.
We would also not exist if there were no gravity so we should lie on the ground. DNA have no feelings I see no reasons why I should feel any obligations to it.
There is nothing wrong in being parasite on something that don't feel anything, or to use computer like it were your slave. I am also parasite on vegetables, and I don't see a reason on why that is bad (they even try to poison me with they own defenses, it is becouse those had survived I don't take it personally either).
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